The long term objective is to work in an academic or non-profit institution and do independent research involving a wide range of issues related to improving the oral health of the population. The primary focus will be on epidemiologic research in areas such as periodontology, oral cancer, oral manifestations of systemic disease such as AIDW, and interactions between systemic disease and oral disease. Additional interests include health policy, health services research, dental public health and technology assessment. The immediate aims are to pursue a doctoral degree in Oral Epidemiology and a residency in dental public health. The goals of the training are to gain expertise in advanced epidemiological and biostatistical methods and their application to oral disease, to gain practical experience in aspects of research, and to get a broad exposure to health policy, management and implementation of oral health programs, and decision sciences, through a combination of coursework and projects. The primary research project proposed would assess the effect of tooth loss on diet and subsequent effect on systemic disease which have diet related etiologies, such as cardiovascular disease and colon cancer and/or the effect of dietary factors and systemic disease on periodontal disease and subsequently on tooth loss. This research will be done primarily using longitudinal data from the Health Professional Follow-Up Study (a study on about 50,000 health professionals with self-reported data collected at several time-points on diet, systemic disease, periodontal disease and tooth loss).